Well, our online presence has trickled due to the immense amount of non-digital work we’ve been doing! And there has been a lot!

Our Sausage Kitchen Makeover is nearing completion. We’ve got all the equipment onsite or in a warehouse in Edmonton. We are just waiting on the tradespeople to complete the required installations. We will soon be able to produce our custom processed products like madmen. We will be working on some new recipes too…

The Animal Handling Cathedral is also being built, and it looks like Spruce Meadows back there! We haven’t got the Baby Mozart hooked up yet, but it’s coming together very quickly! Thanks, Neeralta Manufacturing, C-5 Construction, and AMAC Electrical Services Ltd.!!

An inspector asked us the other day when we thought we’d be completely done these two renovations. We told her, “Should be done by this Christmas.” That way, anything earlier will make it seem like we’re ahead of schedule. _

50 lbs sundried tomato basil mozza smokies
40 lbs bacon cheddar cheeseburger smokies
40 lbs jalapeño cheddar plumpies
40 lbs trad ham rings of gold
25 lbs peppered bison jerky

Hey does anyone need some Peking duck?

Despite the late snowstorm, mother nature is proceeding as usual with a beautiful reawakening here in Sangudo.  What a relief!

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the air is fragrant with the smells of spring – which isn’t a particularly good smell, but we’ll take it over the -40 degrees of winter.  We’ve got one of our three sows pregnant and due to farrow in about 8 weeks, and our milk cow is coming along nicely with her calf, which is due in mid May.

All of the animals, particularly the chickens, are pleased with the longer days and patches of exposed earth appearing on the south-facing slopes.  Even though things at the shop have slowed down a bit, I’m so happy to have made it through the winter without too many serious accidents and also staving off bankruptcy.  Hurray for 2010 and cheers for 2011!!

We processed 15 Wild Boar last Wednesday. It wasn’t pretty. You’ll have to buy me a Twix to hear about it though. I LOVE Twix.

Q: What’s there to fear when your job is to move a 2000lb steer through 25 feet of steel pens, capturing him in the ‘Knock Box’ at the end for further processing?

A: Yourself!!

He was incredibly fat, embarrassingly slow, and calm as a giant meat boulder. That was one of the problems that meant today, I was going to get hurt AGAIN.
By fence walking as if I were a big-boned Jungle Cat, I got Pokey’s massive-huge self contained into the run-up alley that leads into the Barn. Calm. Cool. And without a witness to pull me from certain pain if something went horribly wrong.
I used some rattle paddles to get him this far, but I had to climb some rails to enter his flight zOne to get him to sniff out the entrance to the barn. I figured I had him, perched on the outdoor rail behind his left hip. All I had to do is wait him out and he’d step through the doorway and I’d have won, Zen intact.
Noope. He decided to turn his nine foot body around in thus 7 foot alley. Ooo, I thought, I had better move my leg, which was dangling into the alley way behind the behemoth. Woops, too late. I looked down in terror as Monsto’s gigantic asscheek engulfed my boot, pinning my leg against the steel tubing of the alley rail fence.
It was the freshest, sharpest pain I ever remember feeling, nag the worst part was the crushing force was increasing as this hippo was getting turned around. The fence panels bent outward intuit steel posts as I waited for what seemed like an eternity for the sound of a popping bone that might ease the pain from the compression. Then it was over. He had turned around and was causually strolling to the back of the alley, away from the barn and my gasping. I flopped down into the snow, amazed by how much pain can overwhelm the other senses, wondering if I’d be throwing up or passing out anytime soon. Trin came around the corner just then to check on me, and we both laughed, as I was pretty hunched up and pale and must have been quite the sight!
“Glad it wasn’t my chest though,” I struggled to say.